Are Smart Speakers Simply New Gadgets?

To the casual observer, the Smart Speaker burst on the scene about four years ago with the debut of Amazon’s 1st generation Echo. With Apple’s delayed HomePod finally shipped last February 2018, now the race for domination is really on. Through Smart Speakers, we now get to the music we need faster, smarter with an enhanced discovery experience.

As voice recognition combined with Artificial Intelligence-powered recommendation is rapidly changing the music experience landscape, this discussion will reflect more specifically on why the music industry is strategically leaning further into it, exploring the many challenges to face in the process like ecosystem compatibility, the role of accurate metadata in streamlining discovery, the current state of music-related AI technology among many more.